Terry Pratchett – “Discworld”

I have never read a Terry Pratchett book.

Say what?? Well, my favourites in fantasy fiction were Stephen Donaldson, David Eddings, Michael Moorcock, Ursula Le Guin, Tolkein, Tanith Lee, Anne McCaffrey, Marion Zimmer Bradley et al. I read so much in the fantasy, and Donaldson ran my life without knowing it. Thomas Covenant was my hero: he felt so much like I did way back then!

But I have never read a Terry Pratchett book. Not even one of my old friend Keith’s books on his shelf, so many Terry Pratchett.

This month I read a post from the Discworld Convention – I don’t even know how I found that – and read about Pratchett on Wikipedia – he wrote 41 books for the Discworld, two books a year from 1983. How on earth could he have written so much?? He was knighted by the UK in 2009, but he died in 2015. He was only 66.

My reading was fantasy in the 1970s up to the beginning of 2000, when I think I had run out of anything fantasy to look after my own world. I began reading more non-fiction and I started again with many feminist books. When I moved over to Brisbane in 2005 I left all my fantasy books at mum’s home. (She died in 2007 and I’ve never got the boxes of my books back.) My collection looks pretty small… it’s now only about 500 books.

And none of them are Terry Pratchett!

I follow Aus’s National Secular Society on Facebook, and until I read about Terry in Wikipedia I didn’t know until today that he was an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society in the UK. NSS is a member of the Humanists International (which was known as the International Humanist and Ethical Union until 2019). That has nothing to do with Terry’s books, but he thought of himself as a humanist. Wikipedia says it is

“an international non-governmental organisation championing secularism, 

human rights and equality, motivated by humanist values. Founded in 

Amsterdam in 1952, it is an umbrella organisation made up of more than 160 humanist, atheist, rationalist, secular, skeptic, freethought and 

Ethical Culture organisations from over 80 countries…”

It works for me. I should have joined the NSS when I saw them on FB. I haven’t, but I read their posts every day. Right now they have submitted their response to the religious discrimination bill which will hurt too many people. I recently saw that posts call this the “Gilead” bill, after Margaret Atwood’s book The Handmaid’s Tale. I wonder if others think of this as Google says that “Gilead Sciences, Inc. is a research-based biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery, development, and commercialization of innovative medicines.” Heard of them? I prefer the Gilead we use is from Atwood’s book, but that may be just my own thought.

Anyway, back to Terry Pratchett again! I don’t think I’ll end up at the Discworld Convention in Sydney in 2021, but I should really start with some Pratchett books. Maybe the Discworld would be a life for me.

You think?